By Lasisi Olagunju Ph.D

Somehow, we’ve all, individually, managed to get by and get better but the country gets progressively worse every new day. I thought of how much I paid to get university education – my first degree. The first year, I paid N20 caution fee; I also paid N90 for accommodation. The second year, there was no hostel accommodation so I didn’t pay anything. The third year, there was no accommodation but the university authorities introduced an examination fee of N30. There were protests: “we no go gree…” The school was closed for weeks. We came back and still had to pay. Final year came; I paid N90 for accommodation and N30 examination fee. That was all. So, how much did I pay for my four years university education in Great Ife? I don’t need a calculator to arrive at the total – It was N260 (two hundred and sixty naira only). That was thirty-something years ago. A colleague who attended Ogun State University during same period told me her “fees in the university for four years was less than N1,500.” She paid so much because her school was a tuition-charging state university. Mine was federal; it was tuition free.

Was life really easy during our time? It was tough. We were told that the yesterday that preceded us was better. We were told students needed just N1.50k per day to feed very well on five-star meals. We were told government gave university students money they called bursary. There was subsidized feeding on campus. Tea was free; there were free fruits which the poor without meal tickets feasted on. We didn’t meet that. What we met was the receding aroma of good life. We met cracked hearthstones and cold cafeterias; we met dour dining chairs and sullen tables – all converted to reading items of furniture. We were very unlucky to enter the university shortly after the military came, sacked workers, cancelled bursary payments and annulled feeding in the universities. It was tough. It was during our time that 0-1-0 (one meal a day) or 0-1-1 (lunch and supper, no breakfast) as self-imposed meal-ration formula gained traction. Only children of the really rich could afford 1-1-1 (three square meals) per day. There was an influential Kaduna-based newspaper called New Nigerian. It died years ago because everything Nigeria touches withers. On Friday, June 14, 1985, it published a news piece on hunger in the universities. The introductory paragraph was: “Three square meals have become a luxury in the nation’s institutions of higher learning. This followed the withdrawal of food subsidies by the Federal Government…” So, you see, I am not making up these things. They may sound very far and distant in time, but they are true; they happened. What then was the experience like after we left? I would not know. I was not there.

I travelled back to that past because of an old sheet of paper which trended online last week. It is somebody’s 1984 list of how he or she spent N100 for housekeeping. The author of the paper listed 18 assorted food items that a hundred naira was used to buy. The person bought N14 yam, N6.50 meat, N2.10 beans, N3.60 rice etc. The sheet of paper was an instant Internet hit. It became a celebrity of some sorts and flew from one WhatsApp group to another. Then I remembered Jason Marcus’s song: ‘Yesterday Was Better Than Today.’ It is always better. Right at the top of the sheet was: “See the purchasing power of 100 naira in 1984. Small change still remain sef.” It is a commenter’s snide remarks. Other comments followed – a mixture of anger and self-mockery at what today offers. I took time to read as many as I could. I shook my head.

I forwarded the paper to a professor in America. He did not find it funny. He replied immediately: “Recall that 1984 was a very tough year.” He told me and I agreed with him – we queued to buy rice and sugar and milk and everything – the kind of spectacle you see in Venezuela. Lucky persons (like the author of that N100 sheet of paper) got stuffs to buy. Unlucky sellers and buyers routinely got thoroughly flogged by soldiers – the kind of sight you may see soon in Afghanistan. My professor-friend wrote back again that he hoped “future generations don’t look back at this horrible year, 2021 and sentimentalize how much N100,000 could buy.” I told him that I hoped so too. Then he added: “1984 was the first time in my life that I knew what hunger meant. Buhari’s boneheaded policy of changing currency brought enormous hardship. My dad lost all his money.” True. Many highflying beings during this period got grounded. It was tough for everybody who had to live through the affliction, the scourge. It was definitely tough for that person who took a whole N100 to the market and came back with a change of N5.30.

A decade before 1984. We were told that life was better. It was Nigeria’s oil boom era when money flowed freely for the elite and the other side salivated and died of envy. That was when the head of our government announced to the world that money was not the problem of Nigeria. He said the problem was how to spend it. There must be a way to do something about the careless positive entries on our balance sheet. So, in 1972, the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, set up a commission to review civil service standards and compensation in the country. The commission, headed by Chief Jerome Udoji, came up with a list of recommendations, the most popular of them was an increase in the salaries of public servants. The increase came with arrears because the decision was backdated. Then government workers got the Udoji awards and became rich. A colleague said after his dad “collected his Udoji largesse in 1974, he took N500 to the market and bought a brand new television set, a new refrigerator, a brand new fan, a new Karaoke music system and a brand new motorcycle.” Several white-collar homes experienced that transformation while others outside government offices carried the trash can. Even then, what was the exchange rate that time?

Nigeria introduced the naira on 1 January, 1973 as replacement for the Nigerian pound. At inception, the naira exchanged for $0.66; the following year, 1974, it appreciated to $0.63; ten years after, 1984, the naira exchanged for $0.77. By 1986, it collapsed under the weight of our husband’s insistence that the naira was overvalued. That year, for the first time, the naira bowed to the American dollar – it exchanged for N1.75/$. By 1988, it went down to N4.54 to a dollar; ten years after, in 1998, it moved further down to N21.89 per US dollar. Galileo’s Law of Falling bodies took over in 2015. That year, N192.44 equalled one dollar. In 2016, it fell to N253.49 per dollar; in 2017, it fell to N305.79 per dollar. In 2018, it fell further. It slumped in 2019; in 2020 it was N373 per dollar. In 2021, it is aiming at the sea bed. What was the value of the naira yesterday? A dollar exchanged for N530; one Pound Sterling was N722. Remember it was N2 per Pound at the inception of the naira in January 1973. What will happen when a dollar and a million naira become equals? Nothing. Nothing will happen. Nigerians and their country will just trudge on while their leaders hold feasts of wealth.

We feel daily that we may have failed permanently to halt the drift; that we have lost the ocean to the sharks and the whales – the big fishes who fat on small fishes. We, truly, are in precarious times etched in depressing headlines every day. We do not have the optimism that keeps other nations going in difficult times. Outside here, things get better. Outside here, people do what Max Roser, an economist at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford University, asks his people to do in moments of dire straits. He asks them to breathe in and breathe out and confirm that good things may be happening around them. Oxford is in the United Kingdom, so Roser could bask in sunny optimism. The economist tells his audience: “To really understand how the world is changing, you have to look at the big picture. You have to zoom out from the current events to understand in which direction the world is changing. We live in a much more peaceful and inclusive world than our ancestors of the past.” Of course, if you live in Nigeria as I do, you would have no problem disagreeing with the last sentence; what that economist said on peace and security. It was our ancestors’ world, not ours, that was a “much more peaceful and inclusive world.” They passed it to us, we lost that world – without tears.

Unless we collectively do something drastic about our situation, the cascading doom will consume us. Very soon, a dollar will exchange for one thousand naira and nothing will happen. On May 12, 2014 – seven years ago, I wrote here, in this column, that Nigerians don’t cry for long over anything, let alone grieve over spilt milk. Nothing has changed. We sustain nothing positive. Nothing shocks anyone in Nigeria for more than one second. It is a nation of solid shock absorbers. Nigerians’ journey through rough life rarely evokes the kind of grin you see on the faces of bumpy riders. Their ride, no matter how stress-filled, knows neither compression nor rebound. The damper in their system is beyond human comprehension. It confounds as it riles. Even amid tears, their eyes see and make excuses for failure. They don’t get blinded by events that pluck other people’s eyes. So, will today be better than what yesterday was? What does your religion tell you about how to get better? My own faith tells me that “Indeed, God will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.”

I wrote the following on March 1, 2021. With what is happening, I find it still relevant, hence repeating it today.
I had intended to continue with the topic, ‘Nigeria and Presidential Democracy: Any Better Alternative? (3)’ but I had to suspend it; it is more of a proposal for the future. I had to look at what was immediate. Boko Haram (translated to mean Western education is a sin) advocates are threatening to overwhelm the North and impose their creed on a docile, perhaps Janus-faced, like people.

Since kidnapping for ransom became a fad on the Abuja-Kaduna road and in the bushes of the northwestern and central states of Nigeria, I started shouting here that it is a financial drive by Boko Haram. The kidnappers belong to their economic arm. They are only ignorant foot-soldiers being used as cannon fodder.

On December 24, 2018, I wrote on this page: “In the North West, armed bandits, perhaps Boko Haram with another face, are threatening to take over with Zamfara State almost under their control. It is under their control, well, almost, because they ransack communities at will, kill, maim and take as many as they can with them for ransom. The bandits can come to a marriage gathering and just demand the bride-to-be and she would be handed over to them, with thanks.
“The North Central has become a traveller’s nightmare—from Rijau, Birnin Gwari, Gwanin Gora, Rijana through Kaduna and down to the suburbs of the Plateau. One travels at one’s own risk as even four-star generals are not safe, being killed at will. Herdsmen kill every moving object and sack villages, burning everything to ashes. Kidnappers are also having a field day. Are some of them, especially the herdsmen and kidnappers, another face of Boko Haram, getting them the much-needed cash?
“Our security apparatuses possibly need a total overhaul and help from elsewhere. There has to be synergy among the different actors, and there is the need for modern policing methods and the revival of community policing.”
Yet two weeks later I again wrote: “We have been at war for quite a long time, but it became even more apparent with the return of the Dapchi girls. There was a real ceasefire when the girls were returned, the type we see in areas that are in a state of war, like Syria, Columbia with the FARC rebels and in parts of Congo and Uganda, where the Lord’s Resistance Army operates.
“It is an actual war when a militant organisation can ‘force’ the Nigerian government to sit with it and an agreement brokered by international bodies under the international Law of Armed Conflict.
“The president was quoted as ordering his service chiefs not to allow the abductions of girls again. A citizen, in the first place, would expect the president to tell his service chiefs not to allow the abduction of any citizen, not only schoolgirls. All citizens are citizens and want to feel equal before the law or before the eyes of their president.
“Farmers and voiceless Nigerians are being abducted by those who have declared war on Nigeria, but we have allowed them to play the music while we dance to the tunes.
“And it is this sort of thinking by governments that makes the militants strong. The ordinary citizen sees them as strong and comes to see that his government cannot protect him. It makes the ordinary citizen lose confidence in the country. Little wonder some abducted Nigerians have switched allegiance while others hail the terrorists (as happened in Dapchi) as ‘saviours’ because the people of Dapchi and elsewhere saw the power that should live with their government being exercised by enemies of the state.
“What has happened to our intelligence-gathering ability, especially in front-line states like Borno and Yobe, that Boko Haram fighters would gather, strut confidently, and move in convoys, sacking military bases, villages and towns, at will? Yet our army cannot confront them without support from the air force? The implication is that our soldiers are no match for them.”

It is quite a wonder how scores of marauders riding motorcycles with sawed-off silencers can leave the bushes, come to towns, operate for hours and pick hundreds of students and return to the bushes unchallenged. In the not-so-distant past, our security agencies used to have operatives called “stool pigeons”. They were the backbone of human intelligence (HUMINT) gathering. Our security agencies could deploy them in strategic areas/locations as tailors, shoe shiners, water vendors, etc.

Now, such HUMINT operatives can be scattered across the towns such that the moment insurgents or their economic arm, the bandits, come out, the operational headquarters of our security agencies will be aware. They could be farmers, hunters, villagers and even herders who are all over the place.

The way the innocent child sees their father as a superhero who will give it protection is the way the innocent citizen should consider his country. Unfortunately, we are learning the hard way that in Nigeria, no matter what happens, life goes on. The people’s innocence has been deflowered, but most importantly, their confidence in their country has been shot to pieces. We should fear the day when the citizens will no longer have respect for a government or society that cannot protect its own.
But such is even what is already happening. For instance, it is because the government has not lived up to the expectations of the citizens that concerned individuals like Sheikh Ahmad Gumi are taking the bull by the horns. And on the negative side, we have people like Sunday Igboho taking the law into their hands to “rid their areas of menace”.

The terrorist is by nature a leach; give him an inch and he will take a mile. But the worst aspect of the whole thing is that it is as if the federal government is not aware that it is dealing with ruthless, very intelligent terrorist organisations that see whatever they are doing as mind games.
Because we have failed to protect the weak, governments are not concerned about the plight of abducted individuals; the bandits have now become more emboldened. They go for those that the government must talk about. And it is working for them because in doing so, they are forcing the hand of the government to do what they desire: the abolition of western education.
Our schools are no longer the safe havens they used to be. Students and staff leave in fear of those who will come and take them unchallenged. The worst is that even if they kill one while doing it, nothing happens. Students have been shot to death in the recent kidnappings, yet the kidnappers are being thanked for “releasing” others. Who is to be held accountable for the death of the student? Is there anyone willing or ready to make someone pay for that crime?
So, the government on its own is now closing down schools—exactly what the terrorists want. For how long, not even the government knows. More numbers are now being added to our millions of out-of-school kids we are yet to do anything for or about. What will Boko Haram-orchestrated out-of-school children be doing? Any plans by the government for them or would they be roaming the streets with their minds idle, becoming the devil’s workshop? Does that sound like the death knell of education in Nigeria, specifically the north?
As long as they (Government) will not bring criminals to justice, as long as we continue treating them (criminals) with kids’ gloves, so long shall we continue to play into their hands. They see how others were given “amnesty” and “deradicalised” for taking up arms against the state, wreaking havoc on communities and letting blood flow. They see that the worst that can happen to them is “condemnation”. But condemnations, like rebukes, are meant for those who recognise your authority over them. This class of criminals does not recognise the condemning authorities.

Of course, one can understand the dilemma facing the government. On the one hand, there is the need to assuage public outcry and parents’ concern, hence the negotiations. On the other, the military and various intelligence agencies are finding it hard to end the menace posed by the insurgents and the bandits who are being fed with enough seed money to recruit, train and buy more arms. It is Hobson’s choice for the government.

I want to leave us with a short story written by one Aigg Giwa-Amu: The President was informed. The information got to him at 11 pm on that fateful day. He placed a call to the Deputy Governor of the State and told him tersely “… if by 10 am the next morning, your sons in the Niger Delta do not release the hostages, grass shall not grow in that region for the remaining part of my 4 years Presidency…”
The deputy Governor went into the creeks that night to negotiate the release of the hostages. They were released at 9 am the next day. They were Italians, British and French. That President was Olusegun Obasanjo. That deputy Governor was Goodluck Jonathan.

It is with immense joy and a great sense of honour and gratitude, that we welcome everyone here to the first ever Enugu Technology and Innovation Fair. Truth be told, with the myriad of socio-economic and political challenges facing Nigeria today, the idea of hosting a technology and innovation fair of this nature is in and of itself a revolutionary act. 

We wish to thank God almighty for his supreme guidance. We congratulate our hardworking and dedicated team at the E-tech Centre and many of you, too numerous to mention here who played a pivotal role in putting this together.

We are especially appreciative of the effort of our partners, especially the Enugu State government, led by his Excellency, the Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi and the Enugu-based start-up incubator, Hardware Garage for making this day possible.

Most importantly, we wish to extend our profound gratitude to the young, sharp and innovative minds here today. How can we forget the great sacrifices each one of you have made individually to come this far. Your inquisitive, ingenious and avant-guarde spirits represent the future of Nigeria. Thank you.

Of course, we cannot fail to acknowledge all of you here present. We  are deeply honored by your presence and please be rest assured that we do not take your support for granted.

It’s through the collaborative effort and total commitment of all of you that made this day even possible. It takes a village and we thank you all immensely.

With that said, let me quickly remind us why we are here and why today is so special. It is the day that we as a people, have elected to leapfrog the effort in transforming this nation from a beggarly produce-based monolithic economy, heavily reliant on crude oil revenue to a technology-driven, knowledge-based one with limitless potential. If we as a people will thrive in a restructured Nigeria, there is a need for new sets of revenue streams that do not depend on the monthly allocation from the federation account. If Nigeria will survive in the 21st century, it has to be weaned off of overdependence on crude oil which is fast being replaced by more environmentally-friendly energy alternatives. This leap, ladies and gentlemen, is very crucial to our survival.

In January last year, yours truly wrote a widely circulated open letter to the South-East Governors. In the letter, we bemoaned the fact that Ndigbo with all our famed ingenuity and spirit of enterprise, are punching way below our weight. We reiterated the fact that as a people, based on our current socio-economic realities, we are not just ill-prepared but poorly positioned to function in the present or take on the future.

In addition to widespread insecurity, poor and decrepit infrastructure, the lack of access roads between our sister states continues to hamper what should be a seamless movement of goods and services across state lines. Our region has consistently lagged behind others in terms of being a favoured destination for new investment capital. We argued that to survive in a post-oil Nigerian economy, our people need to massively invest in areas of science and technology so as to transform our nation in general and the South-East in particular, to an innovation hub that will spur wide ranging economic activities. Ladies and gentlemen, part of the fulfillment of that dream is why we are here today.

Our method is simple. Harness the innovative spirit that propelled many inventions during the dark days of the Nigerian civil war to grow our faltering economy. The inventive mind that pushed us to make big things out of nothing is still alive and well. All we need at this time is for both our political and business leaders to buy into this redemptive idea.

In line with our vision, there are few steps we believe should be taken to make progress in that direction:

1. Create a conducive environment for innovative minds to develop and thrive. We do not need to be importing toothpick from China when we have young brains here that build drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) in our backyards.

We recently completed a 150million naira Enugu Tech and Innovative Centre along Enugu-Abakaliki Expressway. It’s a 4000sqm of built space where innovators or would be innovators could have a space to practise their art. We have approached local colleges and also reached out to the federal universities of technology throughout the country in order to identify brilliant scientific minds and get them to partner and train in our centre. This is not a matter of doing the talk, we are actually walking the talk. But we can do a lot more with your support.

2. Seed Capital

Identify local technology startups with great economic potential and provide them with seed capital. In that regard, we are happy to partner with a reliable startup incubator called Hardware Garage. This company domiciled in Enugu and run by hardworking young Nigerians have successfully midwifed few local technology companies all the way from product development to commercial success. We need more of those.

3. Annual Enugu Technology and Innovation Fair

A yearly event like what we have today that brings together innovators and business people in one place, in a symbiotic relationship is critical to our effort. The innovators will help develop the parts and equipment needed to service local industries while business people will help the startups by investing in product research and development. Such an event will also position Ala-Igbo in particular and Nigeria in general as a technology hub within the West African sub-region.

Those are our goals and we are open to collaboration with anyone, willing and able to complement our effort.

Not too long ago, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) listed two out of five South-East states among those with poverty rate higher than the national average. My people, not only do I feel highly embarrassed walking around with such an unflattering label on a place I call home, but I am seriously troubled by it. I am sure we all feel the same way. What that means is that with all the song and dance we make about the Igbo spirit of enterprise, many of our people still manage to find themselves, living like the poorest of the poor. Of course, this is not just from the action or inaction of one administration, past or present. It’s a culmination of decades lost to the locust. Things are not looking good my people.

As Ndigbo, our history need not be that way. We are still the same people with an indomitable can-do spirit that defiles all odds. We are still the same people that rose from the ashes of war to build the strongest middle class in sub-Saharan Africa. And yes, we still have what it takes, today and even tomorrow. All that is required is to do away with the toxic mindset of self-defeatist crass individualism that elevates primitive accumulation of wealth to the detriment of all.

Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. M.I. Okpara, the man in whose memory this hallowed ground is named after, committed his life fully to the service of our people. It is therefore not surprising that many decades after his demise, his name continues to ring a bell and inspire awe in all of us. I can assure that M.I was not the richest man of his generation. The task before us today is therefore very simple. Be the change that you want in our society and hope to be remembered like Okpara.

We thank every one of you for coming. May God bless!

•Osmund Agbo, MD, FCCP
CEO, Enugu Tech & Innovation Center delivered this speech given during the maiden Enugu Technology and Innovation Fair held on Thursday, August 21 at Michael Okpara Square, Enugu.

By Abdulrasheed Bawa

A law or regulation is only as good as its enforcement. A society where enforcement is jaundiced or non-existent is inevitably sucked faster into the black hole of failure. We are plagued by a situation where the auto-response to any demand for accountability is to raise doubts about the ‘real’ intentions underlying such a demand, adamant from the outset that it must be anything but altruistic!

There are so many matters we all agree on in Nigeria. However, there is perhaps none more so than the fact that Nigeria is a country of laws. We also coalesce a hundred per cent around the fact that our bane is the lack of the enforcement of these laws.

However, this realisation has not served to point us in the direction of more rigorous enforcement as the best vehicle, at least for now, to convey us to our El Dorado. Rather, we, again, almost unanimously, hanker after more laws, which we say would be better laws to address the same age-old circumstances and emergent variants of ancient problems.

In our realm of law enforcement, nothing illustrates this, I think, better than the statement I made some months back, that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) would start requesting from bankers evidence of their compliance with the Bank Employees Declaration of Asset Act, 1986.

No sooner had I made this declaration, setting June 1 as the date we would start requesting the bankers’ confirmation of their statuses with respect to the provisions of the Act, than all hell was let loose.

The interventions on that matter made by many otherwise distinguished ‘public affairs analysts’ did nothing to take away from the fact that the mentioned law has been in existence for almost four decades; they did nothing to take anything away from the fact that even way back then, thirty-five years ago, the Nigeria we dreamt of building was one in which the guardians of our private wealth and the public till, those from whom the highest possible level of professional integrity and moral rectitude was expected, did not become vehicles of money laundering themselves.

Furthermore, the avalanche of interventions did not deny the fact that the law has been comatose until now. Rather, many of the individuals and sponsored groups who felt pained enough to weigh in, sought to divert attention and spin a narrative that the EFCC was overreaching its legal mandate, a position that’s essentially a rebuke of the EFCC’s raison d’etre.

The work my colleagues and I have been lucky to be called to do at the EFCC, is essentially to enforce the law, without let or hindrance, and that is what we will continue do without minding whose ox is gored. However, another plank of our twin mandate, which Nigerians do not hear a lot about or do not seem to appreciate, is that of prevention.

As such, we are charged under the EFCC (Establishment) Act, 2004, to engage appropriate mechanisms to prevent the commission of economic and financial crimes. This includes engaging with different stakeholders, and carrying out enlightenment and sensitisation campaigns, with a view to nipping economic and financial crimes in the bud.

However, I have always maintained that there is no better prevention tool than a vigorous enforcement regime, one that is applied across the board in strict adherence and compliance with extant laws, rules and regulations.

It is only in the environment of rigorous, unbiased enforcement under the strict dictates of the law that, I believe, we can move this nation forward.

Let us face it, those countries we tend to run to, to borrow the yardsticks for measuring or situating our own collective progress (or lack of it), are not doing anything extraordinary; in very plain terms, they enforce their laws and regulations, no matter who it is that has committed an infraction.

I take it that they have achieved that enforcement nirvana that makes each and every person to accept that the first and indeed the only rule for holding public office is to act for the public good and that when you act contrary to set laws or regulations, you will be held to account.

The question is, do we need more laws or regulations? I certainly think we need better, more responsive laws as veritable guardrails of our march to nationhood. But, whilst we are hard at work formulating those, the real question begging for answer is, how much of the functionality of available laws have we, as Nigerians, tested to hold both public officers and the public system they run accountable?

In those climes, enforcement is a given, it is a normal course of action attracted by infraction and not (as we tend to conceive it here) as some grand witch hunt.

Let us be clear that while focusing on enforcement, principally from the law enforcement perspective, this is really an issue that cuts across all facets of our lives as Nigerians. Like white elephant projects never designed to work, the regard we have for our laws is that of decorative monuments on our national landscape.

A law or regulation is only as good as its enforcement. A society where enforcement is jaundiced or non-existent is inevitably sucked faster into the black hole of failure. We are plagued by a situation where the auto-response to any demand for accountability is to raise doubts about the ‘real’ intentions underlying such a demand, adamant from the outset that it must be anything but altruistic!

For a nation whose nationals are almost always on the lookout for targets to blame for everything considered unfortunate (notwithstanding that it may be the proper and justified outcome of a chain of events), the aggregation of society into combative ‘we’ versus ‘them’ columns is very easy.

Thus, the person against whom the law is being legitimately enforced, sees all enforcement activity and even the person enforcing the law as extensions of his/her so-called oppressors.

The tragedy we have confronting us as a nation is that at every turn, we see our very best in every facet of life either lying waste or dormant and, as we are wont to say, we prefer instead to travel all the way to Sokoto in unending quixotic searches for that which is right here with us in our sokoto!

The question is, do we need more laws or regulations? I certainly think we need better, more responsive laws as veritable guardrails of our march to nationhood. But, whilst we are hard at work formulating those, the real question begging for answer is, how much of the functionality of available laws have we, as Nigerians, tested to hold both public officers and the public system they run accountable? The simple answer from our experience, when we asked bankers to comply with extant provisions of that very old law, is sadly not very much.

This is why it so gratifying for those of us at the EFCC to note that as a Commission, we have deliberately chosen to show leadership in asking public office holders to account for our commonwealth that they hold in trust.

In this regard, we make bold to say that no agency of government in Nigeria has done more to advance the development of the law in the last 18 years than the EFCC. This is because every day, across the length and breadth of this country, we are using the instrumentality of extant laws to hold public officials accountable.

Apposite examples of the baked-in resistance to law enforcement are replete on the EFCC’s Facebook page. Recently, as part of the strategy to use different media to inform and warn against (and thereby prevent) economic and financial crime, we put up a cartoon depicting an enforcement activity: The artist’s illustration is that of a group of internet fraudsters trying to escape with the EFCC in hot pursuit, discarding in the process their instruments of ‘trade’, including the tell-tale laptop. The reaction of one Ajayi Abiodun Adeyemi was this:

Please EFCC show us top functionaries in government that looted our national treasury…not an unemployed youth who unintentionally engage in internet fraud because he could barely put food on the table.

He goes further to conclude that, the “EFCC is a classified reprobate full of intellectual hypocrites.”

Another sampler from one Clinton Ofili says:

EFCC are just groups of legalised looters, bandits, hoodlums, herdsmen, boko haram, fraudsters, miscellaneous miscreants, robbers, hired killers, kidnappers, kidney harvesters, organ harvesters, serial killers, known gunmen….

…there is a lot to expect from all of us and it is our individual failings to follow through on enforcement processes that ultimately feed the wrong mass notion that demanding transparency is a misnomer and that the person demanding it is the person who has committed a crime.

All these for simply doing our job! We can understand the wide-held, but wrong supposition that the Commission seems to place unnecessary premium on the investigation and prosecution of internet fraudsters to the detriment of the big fraud cases. But this is not so.

The message that a number of visitors to our social media pages leave for us to go after those who steal billions of naira with a single stroke of the pen, is well taken and we have been doing so since 2003, with numerous trophies and scars of battle to show for our efforts.

We have, since our inception, been seeking accountability from politicians of all hues and businessmen of all shades; we have gone after bankers and public servants. And across the country, from the High Courts all the way to the Supreme Court, the dockets of courts are filled with EFCC cases. The laws against cybercrime, which are markedly different from those criminalising other acts of economic and financial crime, are only a tiny slate of the laws that the Commission enforces.

However, because we see a trend where some big entertainment and social media stars are either into or they glorify internet fraud, the youth section of the society, who are the greatest consumers of entertainment and the predominant users of the Internet, tends to view enforcement activities negatively.

Let me quickly note, however, that they only borrow a leaf from the older economic and financial criminals who have established themselves in critical sectors of our public life and big business.

For those ones, the EFCC is always the agent or lapdog of the other party; the spiked cudgel of the government in power; the anti-progress arrowhead and so forth. Rather than give straightforward answers to the accountability questions we ask them, they and their hirelings automatically respond in any of these variety of ways: ‘It is because I am from X region or hold X religious belief’ or very ridiculously: ‘Why me, why has EFCC not gone after the other (corrupt person)? At a more dangerous level is the insistence by the feisty aso ebi-clad kinsmen of an alleged corrupt former public functionary, that that alleged thief is their own (beloved thief)!

At court appearances, they come with drummers and singing troupes to gyrate round court environments and threaten EFCC operatives and prosecutors. In one instance in 2007, thugs bussed from hundreds of kilometres away actually pulled down the fence of the Federal High Court in Kaduna.

Progress will continue to be a mirage for any nation with such a toxic perception of enforcement activities – be they in respect of social or business relations or arising from citizens’ engagements with corporate national or sub-national entities.

Indeed, there is a lot to expect from all of us and it is our individual failings to follow through on enforcement processes that ultimately feed the wrong mass notion that demanding transparency is a misnomer and that the person demanding it is the person who has committed a crime.

That narrative has to change and it behoves on all of us, in all our small areas of influence, to make change happen by insisting on enforcing all rules, all regulations, all laws.

There is also a special role for the media to call out any individual or agency of government that is not keen on enforcement or that has a warped sense of it.

It is my conviction that when we all join hands together in this way, we would have taken a very significant step towards achieving the Nigeria of our dreams.

Abdulrasheed Bawa is the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

This is the text of the remarks made at the PTCIJ Accountability Roundtable on September 2, in Abuja.

Last Thursday, the Department of State Services issued a press statement to deny they dispersed doctors attending a recruitment for Nigerian doctors intending to migrate to Saudi Arabia. The denial was typical of the inelegant press releases the DSS churns out -a rambling word salad, full of feigned indignation, and signifying the characteristic ruse of reducing every issue to a matter of “national security.” This particular statement even read like a chatterbot cranked it up. Notably, it did not deny that the DSS was present at the venue of the recruitment. Given how much that recruitment embarrassed the Nigerian government, it is not hard to believe that the DSS would disrupt the event.

Whether they scattered the event or not, it is not out of place to link them with that kind of errand. Nobody in Nigeria today associates the DSS with intelligence-gathering, stealthy and efficient operations, and the promotion of national security. They are only famous for pursuing the civilians who overreach themselves by protesting Nigeria’s woes. Nigeria has never been more threatened by insecurity than now, and you cannot but wonder what these so-called intelligence cum security agencies really do that justifies their existence. Until the Defence Intelligence Agency invited Navy Commodore Kunle Olawumi (retd.), over the interview he granted Channels TV, who knew they existed? These organisations seem to have only one job, and it is to protect the Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) regime from the shame of its many failings. If they were not a bureaucracy, we would call them political thugs.

Out of the many heartbreaking stories of the breakdown of security in Nigeria, let me share this one. The same last week that the DSS railed over a media report, Abubakar Hassan, the Head Teacher of Salihu Tanko Islamiya School in Tegina, Niger State, where 136 schoolchildren were kidnapped about three months ago, reported that he had spoken to their abductors. They told him that five of the children were already dead, many were seriously ill, and because their clothes have virtually become rags, their parents should send change of clothes. The part that broke me completely was that some of those children are as young as four years. What kind of country watches babies languish in their abductors’ den? Unfortunately, these stories have become trite in today’s Nigeria.

Meanwhile, Hassan also noted that he had spoken to the abductors twice in three days. They had demanded N200m, but the parents could only raise N20m even after the families had solicited funds from the public. The abductors did not budge their demands. An elderly man sent to deliver that ransom in July was reportedly also seized. In all of these back-and-forth negotiations with kidnappers and even public fund-raising for ransom, notice that there is mention of the involvement of the organisations like the DSS or even the DFI?

How do the abductors call the teacher on the phone several times, and there was no reported official effort to track their location? Where do these kidnappers stash away the humongous sums they receive as ransom? In a country that supposedly registers everyone’s SIM card, why have the security agencies not availed themselves of the many surveillance tools of digital technology to find those children? They can find you if you abuse a politician on WhatsApp, but kidnappers that use cell phones somehow elude them? Elsewhere, security agencies train personnel to negotiate with hostage-takers, but these poor families have had to transact with their victimisers all by themselves. Imagine the many layers of trauma they must suffer. In all these, the efforts of security agencies that supposedly gather intelligence for national security purposes are glaringly missing.

What role do these agencies play in these frequent abductions plaguing Nigerians? And no, their silence on these issues does not mean they have been entirely passive. Here are some of the headlines of the reports of their activities: “DSS violates court order on Igboho’s aides”; “DSS finally complies with court order; “DSS denies detaining and torturing Buhari’s late driver”; “DSS cautions against violence and hate speech”; “DSS reiterates call against violence in Nigeria”; “DSS pledges to support protection of NNPC assets”; “DSS warns public against recruitment fraudsters”; “DSS denies arresting, detaining INEC staff”; “DSS says Mailafia’s allegations aimed at creating tension”; “DSS says there’re plans to incite religious violence across the country”; “DSS says some prominent persons plotting to destabilise the country”; “DSS uncovers plot to destabilise Nigeria”; “Why DSS invited Onumah for wearing Biafra T-shirt”.

The kind of inanity that engages the DSS while Nigerians are imperilled by insecurity adds a new cadence to the cliché of political authority fiddling while the country burns. Having wired their entire administrative impulses towards protecting the Buhari regime from dissidents, they frequently sacrifice administrative dignity to bark at every rat. Their lack of administrative focus has grown so acute they even usurp the role of the police -as it happened in the case of The Dunamis Five. These agencies are never linked to heroic retrieval of abducted victims or to effective management of the security threats that diminish Nigerian lives. You will never catch them protecting the lives and dignity of regular Nigerians. All they do is hound those who make their paymasters uncomfortable. The time is still coming when the DSS officials will take it upon themselves to regulate the price of fish in the market.

On the whole issue of the recruitment itself, you could tell how tremendously shameful it has been for the Nigerian political class from the way their minions have been guilt-tripping doctors for wanting to abscond. They bemoan the subsidisation of medical training in public universities, allowing these doctors to get highly trained enough for their services to be prized elsewhere. But first, precisely what is unique about this arrangement? Which country in the world does not subsidise public education? Anyway, since some of the most prominent of these caterwaulers are Buhari’s flunkies, maybe they should also tell us how Buhari has paid the country in any way since Nigeria has subsidised his entire adult life?

After he was ousted in 1985, Buhari never took a job or even contributed as much as a policy idea to Nigeria’s development. All he has done is to take and take and take! For instance, when his aides needed to reconcile the incongruity of his frequent medical tours to the UK with the kind of ethically-driven leader he promised to be, they claimed he had to go abroad for consistency because he has been with the same doctor for about 40 years. But given that he has never held a job in those 30 years, it only means Nigeria has been subsidising his health for that long. In what way has he paid us back?

He got a second chance and returned as a civilian president, but it only broadened his means of taking and taking. His children went to school abroad at the same time he shrugged off the plight of other Nigerians who needed foreign currency for the same purpose. Three of them got lavish wedding ceremonies, fully subsidised by the state. Nigeria has given them lush lives, but what have they given back? Elsewhere, children of the political elite at least try to be seen as giving back to society by working for public service, volunteering with charity organisations, or even joining the military. What do their Nigerian counterparts do for the country? Their parents will not even let them go through the rigours of the National Youth Service Corps, let alone join the military as a gesture of their faith in the country they rule.

Has it not been the case that they smuggle their children into top jobs in the public institutions and multinationals through backdoor recruitments, and unconscientiously displacing those who need those opportunities for upward mobility? If people like Buhari have not repaid society for all the years of paying for their privileges, why accost those who defied the Nigerian odds to become medical professionals for wanting to go elsewhere and expand their chances of thriving?

Credit: Abimbola Adelakun, Punch

Tagged Abimbola AdelakunDSS

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